There is a great deal of verbal and visual wit here, wit that can be seen in much of McPhail’s work as a cartoonist for the New Yorker and Private Eye.

McPhail brings us to his own version of Oz within Nick’s mind. The page turns, and we are in a world of intense color and dream-worthy landscape. The graphics finally explode not with sex but with Nick finding emotion, first of all, oddly enough, in a breakthrough conversation with a plumber when each of them admits his embarrassment and awkwardness in the world. Authentic interaction with another human being is not easy for Nick, and much of this novel takes place in his head as he struggles for connection.

Who wouldn’t want to drink in the “Your Friends Have Kids Bar” or grab a latte in “Gentrificciato,” or a macchiato at “Artisanal Kick in the Back” where the Wi-Fi password is “Dialogue Is Not for Exposition 2007.” Nick frequents them all as a loner, until one day he meets Wren.īut this is not a boy-meets-girl scenario it is, rather, a scenario about a young man evolving, moving forward a few steps and then back a few. McPhail has great fun with these gathering-places-cum-work-stations, giving them terrific names and portraying them in well-drawn black-and-white scenes. Reflecting the gig economy, he tells us that, as a freelance illustrator, he tends to work in public places. His tale follows one fellow, Nick, from a brief glimpse of his childhood happiness to a young adulthood spent, it seems, moving from one coffee place or bar to another. IN AN ERA WHEN alienation and anomie are daily topics, Will McPhail’s graphic novel In.

In the graphic novel will mcphail